Work on the new centre in France will begin immediately and is expected to take around two years.

Groupe Casino CEO Jean-Charles Naouri said: “This agreement is a major leap in terms of quality: 50,000 food items will be offered in the first stage to customers in the Greater Paris area with precise and speedy delivery at home and through a platform which makes it achievable to do this profitably.

“Groupe Casino is very proud to have sealed this deal with Ocado which will further strengthen the quality of service available to its customers, at the core of its commitments for 120 years.”

Casino stated that it will pay Ocado an upfront fees for the services that are being offered to it in the form of the investment being made by Ocado and for provision and maintenance of the technology.

The amount will be paid during the development phase and the ongoing fees will be paid on the usage of capacity within CFC and service crieteria. Apart from this, Group Casino and Ocado are considering the development of other CFCs near urban areas.

Ocado CEO Tim Steiner said: “We believe that the scalable, modular end-to-end solutions provided by the Ocado Smart Platform, will allow retailers such as Groupe Casino to build their online grocery offer in a way that is profitable and sustainable, creating value for customers, suppliers and shareholders.

“We continue to make investments to commercialize our proprietary platform and expect this deal to be one of many successful collaborations with leading retailers to use it the world over.”